Crime and Deviance- Social Groups

GENDER AND CRIME

Men tend to do more violent crimes whilst women tend to do more petty crimes e.g. shoplifting. Recently, women's crime rates have increased a lot whilst men's rates have only increased slightly. Boys are watched more and are therefore in the statistics. Girls are socialised in a way that means they are unlikely to commit crime. Expectations on how girls should behave have been lowered. They are no longer looked after by men as much as they used to be.

In England and Wales, 80% of convicts are male. By the age of 40, 9% of females and 32% of males have a conviction against them. Females commit more property offences. Men commit more violent and sexual offences. Males are more likely to commit more crimes and be punished longer for them.

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Control Theory

The best way according to Functionalists is the female being the carer and the male being the breadwinner. This theoretically gives men more time to commit crime. Girls have been controlled at home and in school shown in Sharpe's (attitudes towards education), Lobban and Best (reading books) and Mitsos and Browne's (boys are more troublesome and get expelled more) studies. ANSLEY= women are the takers of ****... they absorb all of men's problems and also deal with their own. DELPHY AND LENNARD= 57 varieties of unpaid labour. PARSONS= women's expressive role leads to role model for girls but boys reject female models of behaviour that express gentleness etc. Instead boys attempt compensatory compulsory masculinity through aggression and deviance. COHEN= lack of adult male role model means boys turn to other males in street gangs as a source of masculine identity. Status earned by toughness etc. EVAL= WALKLATE= this is based on biology e.g. childbearing isnt a weakness... it can be very liberating. Feminists would argue that women have lower crime rates due to being oppressed by a patriarchal society.

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Heidensohn- Patriarchal Control

CONTROL AT HOME- they are constantly busy with childcare etc. They are stuck at home for very long periods of time. This gives them less time to offend. Rejection of domestic role may lead to domestic violence as seen in the Dobashes Study. Girls are more controlled than boys e.g. home time, clothes, chores etc. They therefore have less time to commit.

CONTROL IN PUBLIC- women dont go out due to fear of men especially at night. Media increases this with scare stories. The media also distorts the truth to make it more dramatic.

CONTROL AT WORK- controlled by male managers and supervisors. Sexual harassment in the workplace is widespread and keeps women 'in their place'. They hold a subordinate position reduces their opportunities to engage in crime. Glass ceiling prevents them from climbing up the ladder to greater places.

EVAL= times have changed... women have a higher position in society and have more control in what goes on around them.

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Lombroso- Biological Theory

There are lots of biological differences between men and women (mainly hormones). Testosterone makes men more angry and confrontational. Women tend to be more comforting and passive. Very few women are born with criminal minds. When women are criminal/ violent men tend to be behind it. Women tend to be more attached to society and those around them anyway so theoretically have more to use. They therefore dont commit as much crime. EVAL= however, times are changing.

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EVALUATION

POLLACK- "women are devious" . crime may be unreported/ underestimated. Women are made to seem innocent. Women are seen as deviant because for generations, women have hidden pain through times such as menstruation, childbirth. They also fake orgasms! What else could they be hiding?MILLET- patriarchy dominates women by telling them how to be respectable etc e.g. said to be sleeping around if they sleep with lots of men but when men sleep with lots of women it is said that they are 'hard' etc. Sleeping around by men increases status... sleeping around by women decreases status. This is called double standard as the 2 genders are given 2 different standards for the same principle. EVAL= still exists sometimes but not seen as often.Women\s standards have reduced.CARLEN- Women are offered 2 deals: 1) gender deal= girls are well behaved, they obey family, marry etc and are offered the opportunity to get a job. 2) social class deal= they climb up the job ladder also going up the social class ladder too. However the deals arent accessible to all. Some deals can collapse due to divorce etc or due to them not getting the qualifications needed. Most criminal women are abused, divorced, sleep around etc so therefore have no/little attachment to scoiety giving them less to lose and therefore more likely to commit crime. For some crime is the only way to gain a decent standard of living. EVAL= patriarchal control helps prevent women from deviating. Society may not give the deals properly to women in the first place making them less accessible. Crime and behaviour can be free will too!. Carlen's sample was small and had similar social backgrounds so can't be generalised to wider society. However it can also be argued that most criminals are working class so this can't be argued.

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EVAL- continued

CHIVALRY THESIS- women are looked afterby men. Women are let off easily by the rest of society. Criminal Justice System (CJS) is also patriarchal. Women become 'hysterical' leading the CJS to let them of easily. CICOUREL- the typical criminal is the young w.class lad... women don't fit this. So maybe women are less deviant but their crimes are less reported. In official statistics men are x4 more likely to commit recorded crime than women. But it was found that men are only x2 as likely to commit crime than women. So who is lying... police, women or men? Women are more likely to be cautioned... 30% men are cautioned compared to 70% women are cautioned. Women are 1/3 less likely to go to prison. However, when shoplifting men are x2 as likely to do it but women are more likely to get caught. CICOUREL- when men and women are confronted by police girls ten to act polite, sweet and innocent whilst boys can have more attitude and act hard. This makes them more likely to be stopped.

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The Liberation Thesis

UK girls are seen as worst binge drinkers in Europe. However licensing hours have been extended recently this could have an effect on all binge drinking. When labour came in to power female violent crime increased by 80%. Drink is said to be an influencing factor. Women are now being convicted more than 200 times per week. Murders commited by girls have doubled. Common assault has increased by 151%. The police believe its due to ladette culture.Girl power is now a global message. Violent women was very abnormal 20 years ago. Violence is now the mose common reason for women being arrested in UK overtaking theft. Women no longer have a calming influence on drinking they can provoke it. Society is now equal in terms of gender. ADLER= as women become more like men so will their crimes. women are now adopting traditional roles illegal and legal. girls' educational achievement has increased so they know more about crime. girls are now doing more white collar and violent crimes. women's higher position in companies at work makes it easier for criminality to spread around. women commit 1/6 crimes recorded... so possibly higher than that. DENSCOMBE= women are just as likely as men to do risky behaviour. EVAL= this isnt conscious. women also expect equality so will act in a way to get it. OVERALL EVAL= womens crime was increasing in the 50's before liberation. w.class women aren't that affected by liberation. there is little evidence that women have as much access to illegitimate opportunities

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Men are still commiting more crime than women

MESSERSCHMIDT= society constructs an image of a real man. HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY- type of masculinity that is often reinforced as the way to be a man its the most criminal too. SUBORDINATED MASCULINITY- want the masculinity but dont have the resources e.g. homosexuals. ACCOMODATING MASCULINITY- found in schools includes messing around etc. WINLOW= men can't show their masculinity through manual jobs anymore as there are no more around. Bouncers etc are more likely to break the law through drugs etc and they illustrate bodily capital. Men usuallu earned status illegitimately through violence but there are few opportunities now adays.

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ETHNICITY AND CRIME

2.8% of the population are black yet 11% of the prison population are black. 4.7% of the population are asian yet 6% of them are in prison. Black people are x7 more likely to be stopped and searched then whites and 3.5x more likely to be arrested and 5x more likely to go to prison. PRYCE- St Pauls Study- Endless Pressure. in the 70's population were getting angry at society for the increase in numbers of police in Bristol. in the 80's riots that were predicted to happen happened. Why were the population followed, racialised expectations? labelling? DO THEY ACTUALLY COMMIT MORE CRIME? its difficult to tell... maybe they are just stopped more by police. INTRA-ETHNIC CRIME= a lot of crime happens within races. not all crime has racial threats. e.g. islamaphobia due to 9/11 etc. 90% of white victims were offended by at least 1 white offender. The Media does tend to amplify a tiny thing into something that could harm society. NEO-MARXISM= w.class blame each otherthrough the media's amplification instead of the real problem, the state.

DRUG USE: SHARP AND BUDD- 27% of males (of all ethnicities) say they have used drugs in the last year. 16% black and white and 5% asian. EVAL= why would you confess to this?

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Surveys

Victim surveys

are very reliable. They are given to society and they admit if they were the victim of a crime and what crime it was etc. EVAL- people may forgot who they were attacked by and just say 'they were black'. not everything gathered is fact. They rely on memory, only cover personal crimes so only 20% of all crime, they exclude under 16yrs and most ethnic mins are under age, nothing about big crimes such as white collar crimes, only cover a small % of offenders. Victim surveys still say that blacks offend more.

Self Report Surveys

similar to confessions. they are anomynous. its said that asians have lower crime rates due to family control but is it because they are so ashamed that they dont want to confess??? However they do support the theory that blacks offend more and asians less.

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LEFT REALIST VIEW OF OFFENDING

Left realists see crime as the product of relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation. Racism has led to marginalisation and economic exclusion of ethnic minorities who face higher levels of unemployment, poverty and poor housing. At the same time, the media's emphasis on consumerism promotes a sense of relative deprivation by setting materialistic goals that many ethnic minorities can't reach legitimately leading to higher levels of illegitimate activites (similar to Cohen's Status Frustration). LEA AND YOUNG- ethnic differences in statistics reflect real differences in the levels of offending by different ethnic groups. So what the stats say is true.

One response is the formation of delinquent subcultures which produces higher levels of utilitarian crime such as theft and robbery, as a means of coping with relative deprivation. Due to the fact that these groups are marginalised and that nobody is representing their interests their frustrations are likely to turn to violent crimes to get their point across.

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Lea and Young

They accept that the police often react in racist ways and this results in unjustified criminalisationof some minority group members, However they don't believe that discriminatory policies fully explain the differences in statistics. They also argue that we can't explain the differences in ethnic minorities in terms of police racism. For example, Blacks would have a cinsiderably higher rate of criminalisation than Asians. The police would have to be very selective in their racism- against Blacks but not against Asians for the racism to actually be the cause of the difference. Lea and Young concluded that the statistcs represent real differences in the levels of offending between ethnic minorities and that these are caused by real differences in levels of relative deprivation and marginalisation. EVAL= they can be criticised for their views on the role of police racism. For example, arrest rates may be lower for Asians because they are less likely to offend than Blacks but could this be that police aren't looking for them to be commiting crime due to stereotypes such as Asians are passive and Blacks are aggressive?

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THE NEO-MARXIST/INTERACTIONIST VIEW OF OFFENDING

GILROY- originally argued that black criminality was a myth. He rejected the view that blacks were poorly socialised and we from an 'alien' culture. He believed that Blacks were defending themselves against a society that treated them unjustly. Both British Asians and Afro- Caribbeans originated from British colonies and the original migrants to Britain carried with them 'scars of imperialist violence'. The anti- colonial struggles allowed ethnic minorities to learn how to fight back against exploitation e.g. by riots and marches such as the brixton riots of london. Although ethnic minorities crimes are seen as a part of a political struggle, he denies that ethnic minorities are more prone to crime than others. The myth has been created by false and negative stereotypes. SUPPORTING EVIDENCE- In Brixton, it was said by the police that we give them everything possible.. if they don't want to accept it they can go somewhere else. It was also claimed in a magazine that Jamaica had deliberately shipped convicts to UK during the early periods of migration in order to reduce their crime problems. For these reasons, Gilroy argues that statistics which saw a disproportionate involvement of Caribbeans in street crime can't be trusted, they reflect the prejudice of the police rather than any real tendancy for this group to be more criminal than White Brits.